A hotel bellboy, the story goes, discovered George Best in a luxury suite surrounded by scantily clad lovelies and empty champagne bottles. ‘George, George’, he sighed. ‘Where did it all go wrong?’. It’s the same deal, essentially, with Ruggiero, hero of Handel’s Alcina. As the curtain rises he’s in the boudoir of Alcina, a smokin’ hot love-witch who lives on a paradise island with her minxy little sister, Morgana, and whose only serious failing – and who are we, really, to judge? – is a fondness for transforming her enemies into animals. This being an epic tale of chivalry, and this being 1735, it’s universally understood that having this much fun simply isn’t on. Whether he likes it or not, Ruggiero is to be restored to his virtuous and (in this staging, for some reason) tam o’shanter-wearing wife, Bradamante.
The ROH orchestra was transformed, fizzing and swirling in a buff, buoyant version of period style
There’s your basic dramatic problem: solve for a 21st-century audience.
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